GUN CULTURE 2.0
We continue with James Wright’s next two observations in his 1995 essay, “Ten Essential Observations on Guns in America”:
Observation 3: Most of those 200 million guns are owned for socially innocuous sport and recreational purposes.
Observation 4: Many guns are also owned for self-defense against crime, and some are indeed used for that purpose; whether they are actually safer or not, many people certainly seem to feel safer when they have a gun.
Note that the first part of Observation 4 is italicized because we will take up the rest of this observation in Module 4.
In this session we will consider the evolution in the center of gravity of American gun culture from sport and recreation (including hunting) to self-defense. Following Michael Bane, I have characterized this as a shift in emphasis from Gun Culture 1.0 to Gun Culture 2.0.
CORE RESOURCES
*David Yamane, “The Sociology of US Gun Culture,” Sociology Compass 11:7 (July 2017).
*David Yamane, “Gun Culture 2.0: Evolution and Contours of Defensive Gun Ownership in America,” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences Volume 704, Issue 1 (November 2022).
*David Yamane, “Gun Culture 2.0 and the Great Gun-Buying Spree of 2020,” Discourse (2 February 2021).
SUPPLEMENTAL RESOURCES
*Margaret S. Kelley, “Feminism and Firearms: Gun Ownership, Gun Carrying, and Women’s Empowerment,” Sociological Perspectives (2021)
*Matthew Miller, Wilson Zhang, and Deborah Azrael, “Firearm Purchasing During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Results From the 2021 National Firearms Survey.” Annals of Internal Medicine (2022).
*Claire Boine, Michael Siegel, Craig Ross, Eric W. Fleegler, and Ted Alcorn. “What Is Gun Culture? Cultural Variations and Trends across the United States.” Humanities and Social Sciences Communications (2020).
*Joseph Wertz, Deborah Azrael, David Hemenway, Susan Sorenson, and Matthew Miller, “Differences Between New and Long-Standing US Gun Owners: Results From a National Survey.” American Journal of Public Health (2018).
*Clayton E. Cramer, “Guns and Sport in the Early Republic,” in Armed America (2006). Part of the response to disgraced historian Michael Bellesiles’s claim that guns were not commonly owned in early America, Cramer entertainingly draws on memoirs and travel accounts to paint a picture of the various uses to which common people put guns in the Early Republic.
*Abigail A. Kohn, Shooters: Myths and Realities of America’s Gun Cultures (2004). I have assigned sections of this in the past as she is one of the few social scientists who have tried to understand gun owners on their own terms. In the best of all possible worlds (i.e., with more time), I would require this.
SUPPORT
There is no tuition for this course. If you would like to support my mission of educating people and enriching conversations about guns in America, please use either of the two donation buttons below. Your contributions help offset the costs associated with making this and other work freely available with no subscriptions or paywalls. Even a small one-time PayPal contribution or gift of one $5 “coffee” helps. (Venmo added by request.) Thank you for sustaining my work and my morale.
